Comparison of Empirical and Ray-Tracing Models for Mobile Communication Systems at 2.6 GHz

Accurate channel models for predicting received power under slow fading impairments are essential for planning 5G solutions due to the increased range of possible transmission frequencies. The densification of base stations will pose an increased number of complex coverage and capacity situations where flexible and computational simple channel models are essential. In this paper, we study state-of-the-art empirical channel models, more specifically ITU-R M.2412 and 3GPP 38.901, and their performance on experimental measurements at 2630 MHz for LTE-A reference parameters such as RSRP. A crude ray-tracing model is implemented for reference. The results show an increase in the predictive performance of approximately 4 dB at 811 MHz compared to higher frequencies of 2630 MHz.